The state now performs so many tasks for us that it will be difficult to cope
without it.

Viewers watching BBC News 24 at around 4pm on Monday were given an occasional glimpse inside the chamber of the House of Commons, as the broadcaster waited to go live for a statement on the Great Media Scandal.

The parliamentary proceedings ahead of the main event were evidently considered far too boring to merit coverage. There was Oliver Letwin, on a rare public outing, telling MPs about the Government’s plans to reform public services.

As soon as he had finished, it was over to the Commons to watch Jeremy Hunt getting pilloried for the way he had handled the Murdoch bid for BSkyB.

This was much more fun. But while the phone hacking affair was clearly the story of the moment, what Mr Letwin had to say was of far greater consequence. More than that, it was about the same thing: power – who possesses it, who dispenses it and how it can be abused to the detriment of all and sundry.

The Open Public Services White Paper is potentially one of the most important documents produced by any recent government, because it presages a fundamental shift in power, from the state to the people.

The big question is whether this will ever happen – not just because central government relinquishes its grip with the greatest reluctance, but also because it is by no means clear that the country wishes to be entrusted with such freedom, or knows any more what to do with it.

This is hardly surprising, given the expansion of the state over the past 100 years. Before the First World War, as A J P Taylor observed, “a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the State, beyond the post office and the policeman”.

Now it intrudes into every aspect of our lives, often with benign intent but not always to our benefit.

The past century was what David Cameron has called the bureaucratic age – an era of state expansion that saw the development of the NHS, mass welfare services and government ownership of vast swathes of British industry.

Since 1979 and the Thatcher government’s privatisation programme, the state has tried to cling on to its power by shifting into other areas of our lives through social engineering and regulatory despotism.

But this requires a popular acquiescence that can no longer be taken for granted. Internet communication, social networks, the ease and cheapness of travel and globalisation have changed the way we live, probably more rapidly than at any time since the coming of the railways.

The defining characteristics of this new dispensation are a lack of deference towards authority, an unwillingness to accept shoddy goods or to wait for their delivery, a constant search for something cheaper and better, and a teeth-gnashing frustration with administrative incompetence, snooping and interference.

People are no longer prepared to accept poor treatment if they go to a shop or a restaurant – so why should it be any different with public services? If we can choose where to go on holiday or which car to buy, why should we not have a greater say over the source of our health care or who collects our rubbish?

This, then, is the Big Idea for the current parliament and beyond – giving people control once more over their lives. As Mr Letwin told MPs: “There could not be a more important issue than this.”

But are we ready for it? Have we not proxied out to the state so many things that we used to do ourselves that no one either knows what to do any more or wants to shoulder the responsibility?

When the first question asked of ministers appearing on the Today programme is, “What’s the government going to do about it?” it is difficult to break out of this attitude of mind.

Furthermore, this freedom will only go so far. As the White Paper makes clear, the state is not giving up its central responsibility for shaping “the character” of the society in which we live – such as tackling health problems or ensuring proper teaching in the classrooms.

We should not be surprised that on the very day the Government was talking about loosening its grip, the Department of Health launched a new national scheme to get pre-school toddlers – even babies – to exercise for three hours a day.

While this is doubtless a good thing, most parents already ensure that their youngsters exercise regularly and those that don’t will not be listening to the Government’s message.

This, then, goes to the heart of the problem. The state now seeks to engineer equalities of outcome in health care or education which are almost certainly unachievable. But that does not stop people complaining when they see one part of the country with better schools and hospitals than theirs.

Indeed, the White Paper is adamant that it seeks to achieve greater fairness, so what happens when this does not happen? Ministers will have to hold their nerve when the “postcode lottery” complaints start to be made by MPs on behalf of their constituents.

The White Paper sets out when central government will intervene in the event of institutional failure and bring in new management or change service providers. But this will not be used as an excuse for “returning to the old ways of top-down prescription” since, as the document observes, “centralised, closed public services have not prevented failure in the past”.

That is indisputably true; and yet following this policy through will require a level of political will that any government will find hard to sustain. History shows us that the tension in British politics between a liberal instinct and a paternalistic one is usually settled in favour of the latter.

However radical Mr Cameron considers his Government to be — and the White Paper is unquestionably a radical, though oddly diffident, document — he will find the allure of social conservatism hard to resist.

Turning over the provision of education and health care to voluntary groups or allowing the private sector to run them is a refreshingly bold approach.

But how free are politicians prepared to let hospitals, doctors, schools and local government be? If head-teachers start setting their own curriculums, the Government will step in to stop them. Just look at the furore over weekly bin collections to see the shallowness of the commitment to let councils do their own thing.

Moreover, this all needs to be set against demands for efficiencies and spending restraints, which usually mean greater, not less, centralisation, as the Treasury tries to keep a hold on budgets. Perhaps the overriding reason why it took so long to agree the White Paper’s contents was that sense, so hard to shake off, that the man in Whitehall really does know best.

But he doesn’t; and there is some pretty damning evidence against him. Between 1997 and 2011, total public spending increased by 57 per cent in real terms without improving one jot the UK’s international position for delivering a host of public services, from cancer survival rates to levels of numeracy. The state does infinitely more than it did a century ago, but it does it very badly and at an exorbitant cost that we can no longer afford.

The time has come for it to stop trying to run our lives from the cradle to the grave. The trouble is that we may have turned into a country that feels more comfortable being looked after than looking after itself.